That may seem a bit premature, considering the movie doesn't even come out until September, but it's not hard to see what's got them so fired up. If you were a cab driver and a movie trailer about an evil, murderous cabbie became the most popular trailer ever -- as It's trailer did, garnering nearly 200 million views in its first 24 hours -- you might worry for your professional future, too.

Pop culture hasn't been particularly kind to clowns over the years. Let's take a look at a few examples:

In 1982, Poltergeist featured a toy clown that attacks a little boy and drags him screaming under the bed:

One of the clowns Mel interviewed, Nick "Mr. Nick" Kane, even referred specifically to that. “We just experienced a nice break from the scary-clown meme from last October," Kane said. "And just when things are starting to normalize, the It trailer comes and it’s like, ‘Here we go again.’”

Infamous serial killer John Wayne Gacy, in between butchering 33 people, liked to dress up as Pogo the Clown before he was executed in 1994. (This may have been the inspiration for AHS's Twisty -- Gacy appeared as a character in the fifth season, dressed as a clown and portrayed by the same actor who played Twisty.)

All told, it hasn't been a particularly good couple of decades for actual clowns. This certainly isn't It's fault, though if the movie is anywhere near as big a hit as the trailer, that could mean even more misery for people in the floppy-shoes/fluffy-collar/red-nose industry.

"It’s a dying profession," laments 42-year-old Guilford Adams, who has performed as a clown named "Gilly" for 20 years. "And the people who do it and scrape together a living have to grapple with the fact that it’s cool and hip not to like clowns. The ultimate prick in this [It movie] is that it’s going to turn young consumers away from an art form that’s sweet and nice and not about the Kardashians and Minecraft."

Wait, so heroic clowns just want to save us from the evil Kardashians? Sounds like a great idea for a movie!